Anyone have any information on starting one of these events? like costs and such? I want to start an annual event at my home course for many years to come and need the information so that I can start doing some stuff. any and all help is appreciated, this is my first attempt at something like this.

Most of the time putting contests are piggy-backed on other events like a pro-am tourney or a disc overall event.

You could try to have a putting contest stand on it's own but to attract a good sized turnout you'd either need an attractive purse or nice merchandise sponsors.
Jwwt had a putting competition with sponsors that piggybacked a pro-am a few weeks ago you may want to pm him for input.

The Grange hosts a tiki tournament that's piggybacked with the Virginia Open A-tier. The way they run it is a single elimination head to head bracket competition.

At the 05 Worlds they had 9 baskets with 3 different marks to putt from the closest mark was worth one point the second closest was worth 2 points and the farthest was worth 4 points. It was par 2 so if you 3 putted you deducted a point and if you four putted you deducted 2 points. You could choose which mark to putt from, so if you wanted an almost sure point you putted from the closest which was normally in the 15-20' range. The middle spot was around 25-30 range and the furthest mark was around 45'. Using obstacles like trees, bushes and low hanging branches adds to the challenge and variety of the holes. Good use of elevation changes adds an element of risk reward.

Other variations will have a speed element to it. We used to have a speed putting event where you had two baskets 30' apart and you had 5 putters and 30 seconds to sink as many putts as possible. All misses had to be putted out before putting back to the next basket. It was a nice balance between accuracy and speed and was very entertaining to watch. The crowd counts the completed putts out loud in unison which fuels the adrenaline for the player putting.